Saturday, November 25, 2017

Doomsday Clock,
from the little we knew, and know, about it is a story uniting pairs together.
On the one hand, it is about the Watchmen Universe and the DC Universe, and
some interaction that has happened and/or will happen between them. More
specifically, it is about Dr. Manhattan and Superman as the two representatives
of those worlds, alike in being the pinnacle of their worlds' power, but
staggeringly unalike in many ways. It is also about a pair of stories, as Doomsday Clock is a sequel to Watchmen, one of many times that Geoff
Johns has picked up on an Alan Moore story and taken its storyline further. The
structure and visual design of Doomsday
Clock is overtly following that of Watchmen
and close comparisons between the two texts is called for.

This begins with the covers. A man holding a sign saying THE
END IS NEAR appeared often throughout Watchmen
and in Doomsday Clock the first cover
(and first panel in the story) updates that to: THE END IS HERE. The second
seems obviously to be a chronological sequence after the first, but with closer
examination, we will see that the two "END"s are quite different. The
interior page showing the title cropped in huge block letters makes the
"DO…" appear to be a DC, which is not coincidentally the name of the
company and the initials of this story. (I'll use DC for brevity's sake, and the italics will be a necessary cue as
to whether that means the company or the story.)

The man with the END IS HERE sign is shot dead and his sign
trampled upon, which makes for a wonderfully ambiguous response to his
prediction: Does this, his end, mean he was proven right or will be proven
wrong?

Two Hours in the
Watchmen Universe

Most of DC #1
takes place on the Watchmen Universe, and it takes a careful reading to unpack
what is going on, because it is one of the most eventful days in that world's
history, and much of the narration, beginning with the first panel, is
unreliable (as Rorschach – a new Rorschach – is unable to remember the
date). Therefore, before the first panel is done, we remarkably have three
pieces of information that we can't trust: That the narrator/diarist is
Rorschach, the date, and whether or not the end is really here (it is a cliché
for lunatics to claim this when it is not truly the end, often intended in a
Biblical sense).

Events on this day in the Watchmen Universe include:

• An angry mob storms Veidt's corporate headquarters in New
York.

• Soldiers raid Veidt's base in Antarctica.

• Russia perhaps
invades Poland.

• The Vice President perhaps
goes on a shooting rampage and takes hostages.

• The U.S. government eliminates the news media and begins a
central national news agency with monopoly control over the news.

• A President Redford, whose time in office must have begun
in 1988, was trailing in polls until the revelation in early November 1992 that
the New York Massacre was perpetrated by Veidt. This last-minute revelation
swung the 1992 election in Redford's favor.

• The U.S. prepares a nuclear strike against Russia.

• The U.S. evacuates major cities including New York.

• Rorschach, working with/for Veidt, breaks a villain named
Marionette out of prison to help him summon Dr. Manhattan to save the world.

We also learn, if appearances can be trusted, that:

• Veidt's faked alien invasion was exposed as a hoax exactly
as implied by the end of Watchmen.

• Veidt has cancer; monitors in his Antarctic base show a
tumor in his right cerebral cortex.

• The Rorschach in this story is dark-skinned and replaces
the one we saw die in Watchmen.

Deception

But can appearances be trusted? Numerous things in this
issue, some of which we already knew, remind us that appearances are often
deceiving:

• The Marionette:A
marionette is a puppet that the puppeteer makes seem alive.

• The Mime: A mime pretends to be in situations that are not
real. They also pretend not to be able to speak, though this one is not
pretending.

• The Mime's fight: His schtick is to pretend to be losing,
for dramatic purposes, then turn things around and win. His weapons are also
imaginary.

• Veidt's New York Massacre: The center of Watchmen, Veidt's entire plan was an
enormous "ruse" or "hoax," as characters in DC #1 put it.

• Superman's secret identity, the oldest deception in
superhero stories. We're reminded of it by the costume folded neatly near his
bed.

• Rorschach: We are shown a Rorschach who dresses, speaks,
and even writes like the original, but turns out to be a new one.

• Details: Rorschach keeps mistaking simple details like the
date, the time, cell numbers, and left vs. right.

• The reveal of Veidt's plan: This was actually published in
1986, as indicated by the final pages of Watchmen,
but went totally ignored at the time. It was published and taken seriously only
in 1992.

• The fate of the superheroes: Rumors regarding Nite Owl,
Silk Spectre, and Rorschach are false, given what we saw in Watchmen.

• The news: The Orwellian (and Trumpian) National News
Network, in its first moments, runs a story about Russia invading Poland. They
preemptively announce that reports from foreign press to the contrary are
"lies." This strongly suggests that the invasion of Poland is a
pretence to justify war. The fact that Rorschach has the countdown indicates
that Veidt and Rorschach knew about the plot in advance and that the nuclear
attack does not depend upon Russia's actions, which would have made their
information uncertain.

• Schrodinger's Clock and Watch Repair. Continuing the
physics analogies from Watchmen in a
new direction, Schrodinger's result with the biggest pop cultural consequence
is Schrodinger's Cat, a hypothetical account of how something can be neither
dead nor alive, until one examines the cat and discovers which is the case.
This is a metaphor for many things we've seen already. In the immediate case at
hand, Veidt's ruse was destined to "die" after living for six years.
We may find out that many aspects of the DCU, including the Kents' survival,
flip between life and death per the machinations of Dr. Manhattan.

In case you missed it, the papers in the manila folder in
the end notes are Rorschach's. They fell out of his car and onto the street
when he brought the escapees back to the Owlcave.

Russian Collusion

All of these clues about misinformation and deception
highlight the unreliable information we are getting about U.S.-Russia
relations. The news of that day, as it emerges:

If the Mime's "sudden, dramatic turn" is a
metaphor for anything we've seen in the Watchmen Universe, it's Redford's
stance on both Veidt and nuclear weapons. And, for reasons we probably can't
guess now, the Russian invasion of Poland looks like the second big ruse that
the Watchmen Earth has had pulled on it. The evacuation of the cities looks
like a big clue. Veidt and Rorschach believe that the nuclear bombs are going
to fly in two hours. Redford, somehow, is going to consolidate his power more
than mere reelection allows, by shipping the population out of the cities and
permitting their destruction. And if you want a real-life historical analogue
for that, it's what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia.

Obviously, from terms like "deplorable" and
"collusion" as well as the golfing President and monopoly on news,
Johns made a lot of this correspond to the current Trump Presidency, but he has
noted in an interview that he wrote this issue over nine months ago, so watch
carefully – he may end up being remarkably prophetic, whether by accident
or because he sees the underlying pattern.

One puzzling piece of dialogue came from the TV monitors as
soldiers stormed Veidt's Antarctic base. As many news networks signed off for
the last time, the final words were taken, more or less verbatim, from the film
Network. In that movie, a 1970s
newsman has a mental breakdown on air and begins speaking his mind freely for
the first time. This is, unexpectedly, a huge popular hit, so rather than fire
him, the network keeps him on and he becomes a star, ranting and raving his
opinions instead of delivering the news. This was, itself, wildly prophetic for
our current era where opinion shows dominate many "news network" time
slots. But what's confusing is this: Was the film Network being shown on one of Veidt's TVs? No. This is the rant
from one of the now-obsolete news network's anchormen upon the American press
being effectively eliminated, and it is a knowing reference to Network,
which presumbly doesn't exist as a film in Johns' version of the Watchmen
Universe.

As a minor erratum, note that it is night in Antarctica as
the soldiers storm Veidt's compound. In late November, it is daylight
everywhere in Antarctica. This is either an error or a sign that this is a
different compound in the Arctic.

Two more important clues: The monitors on the wall show
Veidt's cancer in the form of a brain tumor in what might be the superior
parietal cortex, and it was already quite large and growing in February, nine
months ago. Veidt's situation should be quite dire by now, and motor or sensory
failures could be the prime symptoms. It's surely not accidental that the tumor
is in his brain, which was where his super power truly resided.

The Calendar

One more note about the time: November 22, 1992 is exactly
25 years before the release date of Watchmen.
The DCU has generally been perceived as existing during the real, current year,
so this may mean that time and dimensional travel will be needed to connect
these two storylines or that the
Watchmen Universe is set 25 years behind ours and the DCU. Silver Age fans may
recall that briefly, DC writers posited a 20-year gap between events on Earth
One and Earth Two, to explain why one group of heroes debuted during World War
Two and the next group debuted in the Sixties. (The classic Batman story To Kill A Legend supposed that some
other world might develop its Batman precisely 20 years after Earth One.) Johns
may be invoking a similar system here, with the calendar dates of the Watchmen
Universe set precisely 25 years behind the DCU in certain respects.

Another glaring consequence of this is that the media is all
television and telephone, with no World Wide Web yet in effect.

The Clock

A significant aspect of the hour-by-hour timeline of this
issue is that Rorschach, at the prison, knows (or believes) that the prison
will turn to ash in less than four hours, at least if they don't bring down Dr.
Manhattan. The National News Network gave Russia a four-hour ultimatum, so
obviously Rorschach (probably via Veidt) believes that the ultimatum is a ruse
and that a nuclear war does not depend on any choices that Russia might make. (It
is unclear if time for Russia's response to transpire, which would be more than
15 minutes but less than an hour, are included in his calculations.) He
presumably left for the prison before the ultimatum was even announced, since a
car trip out of New York is liable to take more than 25 minutes.

He began a meal at 11:15 am, so his whereabouts for the
early afternoon are unaccounted for. The issue ends after 6pm, so the countdown
is under two hours. Interestingly, Rorschach tells Marionette that he can't say
how long the job will take. If they need to find Dr. Manhattan before the
missiles launch, then the job must be quite short if it is to be successful. So
the fact that Rorschach can't tell how long the job will take implies that
Veidt and Rorschach expect for the missiles to launch and cause mass
devastation. Maybe they expect Dr. Manhattan to undo a nuclear war after it
happens. Maybe they don't consider a nuclear war to be the end for them.

It is essential to note that the very phrase "Doomsday Clock" was coined by the Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists, who tried to call attention to how close the world might have been
to nuclear war. Johns' clock at the end of this issue gives us just eleven
minutes to go, while Rorschach and other details here give us something closer
to two hours, so the correspondence between them is certainly not literal.

Superman's Dream

The final pages of DC
#1 show Superman and Lois in bed while Superman has a nightmare. This memory of
the Kents' deaths in an auto accident on the night of Clark Kent's prom was
first shown in Grant Morrison's Action
Comics revamp of Superman. It is perhaps a remarkable coincidence, perhaps
not, that Superman and Lois and the "innocence" of their relationship
is mentioned in the final two pages of Watchmen
#1! Passages in the final pages of Hollis Mason's book Under the Hood mention Superman, Clark, and Lois as fictional
characters in the Watchmen Universe ­– perhaps a significant detail! Mason
muses over the way that Clark and Lois were innocent sexually (the book was
probably written in the 1970s and the chapter discusses much earlier years) as
opposed to the Shadow and people in the Watchmen world. If Johns did not intend
for this aspect of his issue to mirror their mention in Watchmen #1, it is a remarkable coincidence; he must have read and
re-read Watchmen very carefully
before starting his work here. If it is a knowing comment, perhaps putting them
in bed together is a statement on how the DCU has shifted considerably from
what it was when Moore decided to write Watchmen
to comment upon it. If so, perhaps Johns is saying that Moore's criticism of
superhero comics is invalidated by the way they have changed since 1985.

Perhaps most significant here is that highlighting the
Kents' deaths, and reference to "God's plan" is going to open up the
possibility that Dr. Manhattan's work in the DCU, as described by Wally West in
DC Rebirth, either caused the Kents' deaths in the
timeline we have now or could undo
their deaths in the rest of this story.

In the final panel, Superman says that it is perhaps the
first nightmare he has ever had. This is certainly not true over the long
history of Superman comics: Doctor's Destiny's entire M.O. was based on
giving the Justice League nightmares, and he also had nightmares in Alan
Moore's Black Mercy story that Johns has riffed off of, in Doomsday: Hunter/Prey, and Kurt Busiek's Superman #666. The significance of it being his only nightmare is
to indicate that something ominous, capable of affecting and hurting Superman,
is on the way.

Page by Page

It's clear that Johns, to some extent, based the design of
his issue upon Watchmen#1, but not copying it to the tiniest
detail. Scenes and layouts and occasionally visual details are borrowed from
the original, but selectively.

The man holding THE END IS NEAR sign is shot as the
President's golf "hole in one" is mentioned. In Watchmen, the man with the sign is Rorschach and tremendously
significant to the plot. In DC #1, we
don't yet know who the man is or if he has any further significance.

The main characters introduced in each issue are in this
order, as follows.

This is clearly similar, with substitutions. Perhaps most
striking is the alignment of Dr. Manhattan with Superman, and the story will be
about their differences and interplay.

We may notice that alignment between the two works is surely
present, but not panel-by-panel. A memorable scene in Watchmen is when Rorschach breaks out of prison, and in DC #1, he breaks someone else out of prison, but in Watchmen that takes place in issue #8.

What's Coming?

The final words of Veidt, in reference to Dr. Manhattan,
are, "Wherever he's retreated to." Using a Moore motif, Johns places
this speech panel on the next scene,
which is in Metropolis, which seemingly gives us the answer that DC Rebirth and The Button already promised, that Dr. Manhattan is in the DCU.
Veidt and his allies need to contact Dr. Manhattan, and somehow they believe
that the Marionette can help them find or reach him. Perhaps Veidt and his
allies will appear in the DCU. If so, finding Dr. Manhattan may be variously
easy or difficult (and the 25 year difference in date significant or
insignificant), depending upon the deus ex machina of Veidt's scientific means.

But they cannot simply remove him from the DCU and have the
story thereby abandon the DCU in issue #2. Perhaps Dr. Manhattan will refuse to
go, and his purpose in the DCU will become part of the plot. Perhaps he will go
and this will undo the changes he made to it. DC Rebirth and The Button
seemingly promise us that a major change will take place, bringing, at the very
least, the Justice Society back into continuity. By issue #12, this will
happen. The question is whether we will have wild, temporary cosmic changes (a
la the central issues of Johns' Infinite Crisis) or one big change at the end after a lot of metaphysical and
philosophical conflict and contrast between Dr. Manhattan and Superman.

But also between Veidt and perhaps other characters.
Rorschach vs. Batman? Or maybe we see Veidt's optimism (ugly though it be)
mirror with Superman's. The copy of Walden
Two on Superman's nightstand hints that fixing society and building a
utopia is something that Veidt and Superman have in common.

Almost certainly, Johns is taking up here a conflict in tone
with Alan Moore. Moore, as I've written earlier, was seemingly hell bent on
destroying the superhero genre, either character by character, or as a genre,
or in one unpublished apocalyptic epic. And so, I think it's quite possible that the
shooting of the END IS HERE man represents the destruction of Alan Moore's
gloom-and-doom take on the superhero genre. Thirty-one years later, we can
certainly say that the genre did not end, and I think most readers here will
agree that some part of the last three decades' work was quite worthwhile.

It's also worth noting that Grant Morrison has taken up
quite similar efforts, with his Pax Americana issue of Multiversity
giving his quite admirable and intricate take on Watchmen, and Final Crisis
culminating with a showdown between Superman and a representative of
gloom-and-doom called Mandrakk. While it would muddy Doomsday Clock quite a bit for Johns to grapple extensively with Morrison's
own metatextual analyses, it will be interesting, as DC goes forward, to see how Johns, who is committed to a career
with DC, takes up the same issues.

Monday, November 20, 2017

At least as far back as 1979, someone wondered what would
happen if you put Christopher Reeve, Adam West, and Lynda Carter – give or take
some substitutions in the lineup – together in one production. Somehow, thirty-eight
years went by before we got this year's Justice
League, which doesn't seem to have benefited nearly as much as it should
have from all that time and all the intervening lessons as to what works and
what doesn't.

One should note, without doubt, there is more than one way
to approach the genre. Christian Bale's Dark Knight and Reeve's Superman, to
note just two, took paths that both worked, in their way, but were completely,
irreconcilably different. It is at the creator's peril that one would try to
blend two different approaches in one work; as the saying goes, a camel is a
racehorse designed by committee, offering so many improvements to the idea of a
horse, you end up with something that can't race.

Justice League,
with its six superheroes, is a six-humped camel – eight or nine if you count
the Amazons, Mera, and the villain Steppenwolf. It's inherently a tough
assignment, with the same number of superheroes that Marvel's Avengers tossed together in 2012, but
without the advantage of so many solo movies to introduce the lineup.

Luckily, the three new additions benefit from wonderful
performers. Ray Fisher is pitch perfect as Cyborg in a movie that shows only 5%
of him and falls even shorter in giving him adequate lines to relate his
existential crisis as a superhero who would really rather not be what he's
become. Jason Momoa was essential casting to lend gravitas to the Aquaman
character who, historically, battles unintended laughs as much as he does
underwater villains: The genetic bulk and fury of Momoa immediately defuses the
threat that Aquaman would come across as a lightweight. And Ezra Miller's Flash
is so likeable, so fun, that nary a fan has complained that his Barry Allen is
so from the comics' version.

Justice League
takes those strong performances, along with others by returners Cavill, Gadot,
and even Affleck, and a dozen or more fan-pleasing moments and puts them
together in almost the worst possible way. It looks as though four or so
different good Justice League movies were made and then the pieces from them
placed in a salad bowl and edited together without much concern. Indeed, and sadly,
something like this did happen, as original director Zack Snyder was taken off
the project due to a family tragedy with Joss Whedon picking up – and
pasting together – the pieces. The result corrects, to its credit, the overly
dark and destructive tone of the two previous Superman (and Batman) movies in
the DC Extended Universe, which were seemingly hell-bent on showing collateral
damage and a world that wasn't sure that having Superman was a good thing. Justice League fixes that, and
undoubtedly has some fun. Most of that fun was, unfortunately, shown to us in
the form of trailers over the last year, but buyer beware when it comes to
watching trailers, I suppose.

In tallying Justice
League's other successes, I must compliment it on melding the Amazon and
Atlantean traditions, which is a bit of sense the comics rarely touched upon.
And to skip ahead to the ending, it worked for me – and I think, the
franchise – to have the superficial ending that the big, bad villain is
beaten simply because Superman is stronger than him. People like Superman when
he is strong, and here he is, and if that's too simple an ending then Superman
is too simple for you.

And some subplots pull it off. When Batman tells an
intimidated Flash to save just one hostage, it gives Miller's speedster the
chance to gain confidence and show us the master manipulator Batman at work. When
an enraged Superman manages to track an increasingly terrified Flash, we get a
perfect moment where the characters and their powers interact to make a moment
powerful.

And there are elements that seem like subtle nods to past comics. I would comment how like a Lazarus Pit is Superman's revival scene, and reminiscent of the Bad Batman Clone who rose from one in Grant Morrison's Batman and Robin. The need of the villain to bring together three artifacts hearkens back, whether knowingly or accidentally, to the demons Abnegazar, Rath, and Ghast who are empowered by a bell, wheel, and jar, from a JLA story way back in 1962. And the opening scene with Batman taking down a Parademon is, certainly knowingly, right out of the DCnU's premier issue of Justice League in 2011.

But here's the basic failure of Justice League: Plots and subplots work when there is a
complication, a climax, and a resolution. These things need some time and
investment to work for the viewer. The complication has to mean something. The
resolution has to make sense. Over and over, Justice League gives us a mini-plot complete with a complication,
climax, and resolution in less time than we can care about – or even
understand – the situation. How does someone spend years working in the
film industry without a much better sense of what is required to make a subplot
pay off? It's unclear where the blame lies: screenwriter Chris Terrio (who won
an Oscar for Argo), Snyder, Whedon, higher-up
consultants, or some medley of all of them. Maybe too many cooks ruined the
soup even though we know from Avengers
that six superheroes aren’t too many for a movie.

And so, we know that Amy Adams can act the hell out of a
role, but when she's given just five scenes to show Lois Lane's dark night of
the soul (one each for her personal complication, climax, and resolution),
there's not enough in the script for her to shine. Amber Heard looks and sounds
as good as you could hope, but the rapid-fire dialogue in she and Jason Momoa serve
up exposition of their characters' history and mommy issues shortchanges the matter
to the point that one must ask why bother? Inescapably, I have to conclude that
Justice League began with the outline
of a potentially great three (or four) hour movie and the creators collectively
decided to streamline, ruinously, several of the subplots while eliminating not
enough of them.

And so, we have civilians who need to be rescued right
before Superman deals with Steppenwolf, including a Russian family who earn
more screen time than Diane Lane's Martha Kent while adding nothing but a
rationale for Superman and Flash to race. And so, we have Batman knowingly
insult the memory of Steve Trevor in order to shock Wonder Woman into becoming
a leader in battle. And so, we have Alfred mysteriously conclude from audio
alone that Batman being upset by the lack of a plan that somehow the team
dynamic is working effectively. (It's not. The subsequent arrival of Superman
is the only thing that prevents Steppenwolf from winning.) And so, we have
Batman determined that the risk of Superman being resurrected as a monster was
worth it after an entire movie was based on the premise that Batman wasn't sure
if normal Superman was something we
could trust. And so, the drama in many viewers' minds whether a Green Lantern
would show up was executed to no payoff by showing extraterrestrial Green
Lanterns during a flashback. And so, we have a villain like Steppenwolf, who
lacked the slightest bit of interest in his personality.

And we have plot holes galore. Seemingly every viewer
realized that Steppenwolf should have stolen the Mother Boxes before Superman
came to Earth instead of waiting for his arrival and death. And that the
Justice League should have guarded the Mother Box after using it to revive
Superman.

If the final result of waiting thirty-eight years for a
Justice League movie could come off this flawed, there was no reason for DC to
wait this long – they could have squeezed Adam West and Lynda Carter into Superman III and fared little worse. But
what's truly frustrating is that they didn't take a little more caution
– a thirty-ninth year if it would have helped – and put all of these
strong performances together to make a movie that everyone involved could be
proud of.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

Among the original-series characters who returned in Twin Peaks: The Return, one of the last
to appear was Audrey Horne, who wasn't seen onscreen until well into the second
half of the season. Despite this late reintroduction, Audrey's four scenes stood
out prominently in a number of ways, being strange, then increasingly strange,
and finally abruptly ending the season's second-to-last broadcast. The Audrey
scenes are hard to decipher in any sensible way and because of – not
"despite" – this, may be among the most important of the season.

First, I offer a quick overview of the four scenes with
Audrey. More details of these scenes and related ones will follow later:

Audrey's four scenes occur near or at the end of episodes
12, 13, 15, and 16. In each of them, she interacts with only one person: her
husband Charlie, who has never been seen before and does not appear in any
other scenes. In the first three, they are in what appears to be their home,
discussing whether or not to go to the Roadhouse to look for a man named Billy.
The conversations they have are remarkably bitter and hostile, frequently
nonsensical, and include the information that Audrey is having an affair with
Billy. They discuss other people, including Chuck and Tina, none of whom
clearly links to any characters we can otherwise identify. In their fourth
scene, Audrey and Charlie appear at the Roadhouse, where the M.C. introduces a
song from Season One as "Audrey's Dance." Audrey dances alone to it,
then a fight breaks out, and she suddenly seems to wake up disoriented in an
all-white room.

There are many oddities, as stated above, and we must almost
certainly conclude that the Roadhouse scene is a memory, dream, or delusion. However,
the first three Audrey scenes also contain remarkable inconsistencies that make
their reality suspect as well:

• Audrey and Charlie's conversation remains on a single
topic, going in circles, while multiple days pass for the other characters in
the show. Much is made of putting jackets on or not, and in the transitions
between them, jackets are suddenly on or off, while all of the other clothing
remains the same. It is hard to explain those scenes as taking place
consecutively or on different days.

• The dialogue is very strange in tone and emotion. Charlie
seems minimally hurt when Audrey makes exceptionally cruel comments. She seems
like a young girl speaking with false confidence about things like contracts as
though she is pretending to understand them. She is very aggressive in the
first and third scenes, but whimpers defensively in the second.

• The dialogue is frequently illogical on a factual
level. Charlie claims that they can't look for Billy because there is a New
Moon. This is not only irrelevant to looking for someone indoors, but
contradicted by a shot showing a crescent Moon. The third scene begins with
Audrey saying almost exactly what she said to begin the first scene. Audrey
says that they have already looked everywhere else for Billy, which certainly
can't be true (e.g., he could be in another state). Charlie protests that he is
too sleepy to look for Billy. Audrey sarcastically asks if Charlie has a
crystal ball, and he answers her literally, not understanding the sarcasm. (Remarkably, he says that he does not have a crystal ball, but there is a crystal ball right there on his desk.) Audrey
suddenly asks if "this" is Ghostwood. Charlie threatens to end
Audrey's story "too." Audrey asks what story that is if it's
"the story of the little girl who lives down the lane."

• Audrey's hair is quite different in the final "wake
up." If her hair looks like that now, the scenes with Charlie are probably
not happening close to the current time, if they ever happen(ed) at all.

• There are numerous references to someone being an
unreliable narrator. Audrey says that she has details about Billy from her
dream in which he is injured. Charlie suggests that Audrey is on
"drugs." Audrey says that she's seeing Charlie as though he's a
"different person" and doesn't feel like she is herself.

Suffice it to say, the first three scenes, no less than the
Roadhouse scene, are difficult to explain as a real interaction between two
married people, and we should suspect that all four of the scenes are unreal,
with the final "wake up" showing Audrey's actual situation, which
seems to be an institution.

We may also note that in several of Lynch's films since Twin Peaks last aired, main characters
dream or imagine their lives to be very different than they are, and the
viewers are shown extended scenes that are part of a delusional reality; the
viewer, like the characters, face the challenge of realizing what is real and
what was the delusion. This pattern holds true in Lost Highway, Mulholland
Drive, and Inland Empire. There
is also a prominent scene in which Gordon Cole says that in one of his dreams,
he is told by Monica Bellucci that their lives are like a dream, but, the
question is, who is the dreamer?

It is easy enough to adopt an interpretation, then, that
Audrey is institutionalized and her vision of a very unhappy marriage with
Charlie and a missing lover named Billy is just a delusion, and that the third
scene repeats dialogue from the first because she repeats different versions of
the delusion on multiple nights. We may also imagine that she has "Audrey's dance" in her dream because the original version of that scene, from 1990, was stirringly memorable, helping to give Sherilyn Fenn national fame and status as a sex symbol, and this is something that older Audrey may remember fondly as the best moment for her younger self. But then, the fantasy goes wrong and she wakes up. This explains the four scenes adequately.

However, that explanation doesn't go quite far enough.
Audrey's scenes can't be merely her internal delusion because other scenes
during the season echo things from the four scenes with Charlie. This is most
obvious concerning a scene in episode 14, in which young women named Megan and
Sophie discuss a group of people with names and biographical details matching
the people in Audrey and Charlie's scenes. To be specific, there is a Billy who
is bleeding profusely from the nose and mouth, and a Tina and another man who,
in Audrey and Charlie's telling, is named Chuck. The last detail provided is
when Sophie asks the name of Megan's mother, and Megan answers portentously
that her name is Tina, and both characters pause strangely in response to this.
It should be noted that this scene occurs in the approximate time slot of the
fourteenth episode that Charlie and Audrey's scenes occur in the two episodes
before and two episodes after, with the time slot as well as the character
names suggesting that this scene is part of the Audrey-verse. They also mention
a "nut house," which could match the appearance of Audrey's actual
location. So perhaps this fifth scene is also part of Audrey's delusion.

But this, too, doesn't go far enough. Episode 7 ends with a
man rushing into the RR Diner and asking for Billy. The music accompanying this
scene is the 1959 instrumental song, "Sleep Walk." Perhaps this, too,
is a hint that this scene, and all the Audrey scenes, are a dream.

We might, alternately, conclude that the Sophie-Megan scene
as well as the "Billy" scene are real and that Audrey, inside the
institution, has somehow gathered details of the real world because Megan is,
as Sophie suggests, spending time inside a "nut house" and could
spread gossip that Audrey hears.

And yet this still doesn't go far enough. There is a fight
in the Roadhouse involving a Chuck and this fight leads to Freddie punching
someone, and possibly inducing a bleeding nose and mouth. There is also a drunk
who is bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth in a jail cell, where he
mockingly repeats everything he hears. Moreover, both Audrey and The Arm in the
spirit world use the same curious phrase "Story of the little girl who
lives down the lane." The Arm says this in Episode 18, after Audrey has
said the phrase. Now we require one of several exceptional explanations:

• Audrey is dreaming as much as is needed to explain all of
the connections.

• Audrey is dreaming everything.
Maybe no part of this season "really" takes place and Audrey is
"the dreamer" of every moment of every episode. Note that the
bleeding man in the jail cell is present when Andy says that he needs to take
everyone upstairs, but is not present when they arrive upstairs. If that very
important scene is part of Audrey's dream, it's hard to draw a boundary around
her dream and everything else. And if she knows there's a Bad Cooper, then
maybe even the second and/or first season of Twin Peaks is a dream, too.

• There is a real world, a spirit world, as well as Audrey's
delusion, and something or someone is communicating between all of them.

• The similarities between Audrey's dream and the real world
exist but are simply unexplained. In the Twin Peaks reality, we've seen this
before. In particular, recall that when Leo was shot, there was also a similar
shooting on Invitation to Love. And
remember when inhabiting spirits MIKE and BOB's names mirrored high school Mike
and Bobby. Probably quite close to why the word "Twin" is in the title,
Twin Peaks shows things that align in
ways that almost make sense, but not quite.

• Maybe the Audrey scenes work on a metalevel. Note that
Charlie threatens to end Audrey's story ("too") and one episode
later, the series does indeed end Audrey's story! This isn't explainable as a
meaningful connection if she is having a delusion and then her life goes on as
before. It would mean that the Twin Peaks
show as a piece of fiction is an
object within the Audrey-verse. We may further wonder, then, if Charlie is a
stand-in for the creative forces on the show, perhaps for David Lynch himself.
This would be the first instance, then, of the show breaking the fourth wall
and making Audrey not the dreamer of part/all of the show, but as a fictional
character aware (even if deleriously so) of her fictional nature.

If the final possibility is indeed true, and the Audrey
scenes work on a metalevel, then there is added significance to the two uses of
the phrase, "story of the little girl who lives down the lane." This
opens the discussion wider to a consideration of what the phrase means in
Episode 18, and to what Episodes 17 and 18 mean overall… Here, I will
conclude the portion of the discussion that focuses on Audrey and take up the
topic again in another post. Suffice it to say, the scenes with Audrey seem
deeply significant, far more than those of other characters and may encompass
what the show's entire story in fact is.